Ratings and Reviews by jakomo

I've somehow missed the previous two instalments of Castle Balderstone, but on the evidence of Several Other Tales, I need to fix that omission immediately. A comic horror anthology in the classic Tales From The Crypt style, it's presented as four spooky short stories from different authors, within the framing device of a late-night meeting of horror authors. It's all Ryan Veeder, but the four stories really do feel like they come from different authors, not just literarily but in the way they play too.

The first is a ridiculous improvised romp with laughs aplenty that would feel at home on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" or on stage at The Comedy Store. The second seems like a parody of the 2008 horror IF Afflicted, with it's hygiene inspector sent to a scary commercial premises. The third, written by a class of schoolkids as a project, is absolutely pitch-perfect, capturing that childrens-storytelling tone with panache. The fourth is a substantial, meaty monster-hunting adventure with many puzzles and a neat combat mechanic that feels suitably climactic.

Choice-based game with seven endings (I saw three, including a "winning" one) and eight achievements (I found five). You're a werewolf, on the full moon, stuck at a party. Can you avoid turning into a slavering killer beast? Or even worse, making yourself look like a dork in front of your friends?

I was bowled over by how much content there was here: there is a ton of stuff to do, lots of interesting characters to chat to (with different conversations depending on what time of the night you approach them), lots of party-related activities to partake in, even some time-management based gameplay to give the whole thing some structure. Pretty great all-roooowwwwwnd!

Parody of The Seventh Seal's chess-with-the-Grim-Reaper scene. It's a proper implementation of the game, in Ink (albeit only on a 4x4 grid), interspersed with a choice-based conversation. I managed to win first time, so I'm unsure how much branching or how many endings there are, but what I found was well-written and effective. Unfortunately Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey has already done this joke way back in 1991. Woah.

Crazily original concept. "Translate" a Latin text into English, using a dictionary and a grasp of the grammatical structure (verb endings and how they match with nouns). LOOK UP words you don't know, MATCH word A WITH word B to make sensible sentences out of them. Don't worry, non-Latinophones, there is hand-holding as you go. It's an entry in EctoComp, the spooky Halloween competition, so no surprises that there might be great danger lurking in the words. Would love to see this mechanic integrated into a larger game. In it's current form, it's slight, but works well as a quick trick-or-treat bite-size candy.

Grab as many treasures from the cursed ancient ruins as you can, and get out safely before you get eaten by bugs, fall down a pit, die of thirst in the desert, or get ripped to pieces by a mummy. I was never fully sure of the game's mechanics but still found it enjoyable throughout, with it's mildly comic tone falling somewhere between the more serious Infidel and the more silly The Horrible Pyramid, to name two other grave-robbing adventures. I finally escaped with my life and £150 to my name. Lots of opportunity for replaying here, trying to maximise your winnings in the style of Captain Verdeterre's Plunder. Fun.

As a pure text adventure, it's passable: a standard short horror story with a twist of the type that now litters the internet. The parser is awkwardly non-standard (use LOOK ROOM, LOOK <object> and GO <location> instead of LOOK, EXAMINE and compass directions) and causes initial frustration.

But it's not a pure text adventure, it's displayed on a monitor screen attached to an old computer in a dark room: and this visual and sonic ambience surrounding the text is crucial to the experience, delivering the shocks and surprises so the text adventure itself doesn't need to.

This forms chapter 1 of "Stories Untold", a commercial compilation of four spooky adventures, and it sets the creepy tone very well. This chapter can be downloaded for free from Steam and GOG.